


Build a home for everyone

by takingoffmyshoes



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingoffmyshoes/pseuds/takingoffmyshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't a vigilante, he simply owed a debt too great to repay to one person alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Build a home for everyone

There was violence there, in his mind, no doubt about it. There was rage, too, in his heart; he didn't deny it.

His hands had hurt, his face had frightened.

But he knew his semantics, and he wasn't a vigilante.

He didn't take the law into his hands; he took up his vengeance and wore it as his mask. It wasn't the criminals he sought to bring to justice—it was his guilt he sought to lay to rest.

He had accosted people, but only to prevent them from attacking another, someone less capable and more defenseless, someone with more to lose.

He had thrown caution to the wind, but he hadn't thrown lives to the wayside.

He knew his history, too, and this wasn't a power-drunk rampage through a city he imagined he controlled. This was blood-feud, a strike against a brethren of evil on whom he was honor-bound to exact revenge.

You take from me, I take from you.

You make me suffer, I do the same.

It seemed like a pretty good system.

And so each night he pulled on the mask, the fabric stretching tightly, like a second skin, but one that showed nothing of his face, and slid the gloves over his hands, the thin material just enough to hide his prints.

Neither hid his purpose, but he didn't need them to; he didn't want them to.

He wasn't ashamed of what he was doing—he was ashamed of who he had been, and so he covered it up in red and blue, veiled the doubt in bravado, and disguised his crusade as the work of a questionably-motivated do-gooder.

He wasn't a vigilante, but he knew he came across as one. Knew, but didn't care.

Because being seen effective as a vigilante was better than being known as a failure as a nephew. As a son.

He had failed to do one good deed, and his world had collapsed. However long it took, however many cuts and bruises and sleepless nights he amassed, he would build the world back up again, but not just for himself.

He would build that world for everyone.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 10/05/2012


End file.
